by Nadine Mutas
“I’m willing to share if you are, too,” the demon said, an unholy glow in his eyes. “We can even tap the sister as well. What do you say?”
Rhun licked his lips. “Yes.”
Merle’s eyes widened, and panic emanated from her pores. Rhun briefly debated sending her a telepathic message, explaining the act, but he needed her fear to be real to make it more credible, at least for now. He took a slow step toward them, his eyes riveted on the tantalizing trickle of Merle’s blood.
The blond demon flashed his fangs in a feral grin. “That’s what I thought. I’m not allowed to kill sweet little Maeve—at least not until I take her powers—but this one here…” He lapped up the trail of blood on Merle’s throat, and it took all of Rhun’s control to remain where he was. If he jumped on the demon now, he might inadvertently kill Merle.
“We can also have fun with the others,” the demon said after he’d licked his lips, clearly enjoying the taste of Merle he’d gotten. Rhun would make sure to rip out his tongue as well.
“Others?” he asked, his voice rough as gravel from the violent emotions he was keeping at bay—barely. He moved another step closer to the soon-to-die bastard holding Merle.
“The ones I get to kill.” The demon waved at the body parts littering the room.
“Hmm.” Rhun was only about three feet away from him now. “Sounds good.”
“Merle,” he said inside her mind, not looking in her eyes, “when I say now, jump to your right.”
Her answer was immediate. “Rip out his fucking heart.”
If he hadn’t been so pumped full of adrenaline, he’d have laughed at that. “Will do, little witch.” He tilted his head, glanced from Merle’s throbbing carotid to the demon, and gave him a grim smile. “I call dibs on fucking her first, but feel free to use her mouth while I’m at it.”
Merle flinched, and the demon cackled.
“I knew you’d come around.” His eyes gleamed with mad joy.
Rhun curved his hand around Merle’s neck, raising one eyebrow at the other demon in a silent request for permission—and the bastard let go of Merle.
“Now.”
Rhun released her, and Merle jumped to the side at the same moment Rhun lunged at the demon. He slammed him into the wall. A blast of dark power struck Rhun, making him stagger back. He still had his hand clawed into the demon’s chest, though, and the son of a bitch snarled as he tumbled down along with him. They both hit the floor, blood splashing around them, and rolled over several times while pounding into each other with physical and mental force.
Knuckles bloodied, fangs flashing, Rhun struck out. He hit the demon square in the face, blocked a mental blow, caught an uppercut to his chin that made his teeth rattle. Another punch to the demon’s solar plexus made the fucker wheeze and gasp for air, which Rhun took advantage of to lay him flat by swiping his legs out. Just as Rhun was about to punch his face in, the demon rolled away, sprung to his feet and rammed his elbow into Rhun’s back.
Fuck. Pain exploded in his spine. Rhun ground his teeth against the waves of hurt zapping his body, forced his spasming muscles to obey. Stumbling a few paces away from the other demon, he straightened up, spat blood on the floor, and breathed past the agony in his back. The blond bastard charged again and slammed into him.
Dammit. The other demon was strong, well-fed and would have made a worthy opponent on the best of nights. Now, though… Rhun cursed as his back hit the floor, shooting more whit-hot pain up and down his spine. He’d lost a significant amount of strength when he’d wielded Merle’s magic, enough to tip the scales in this fight.
His breath sawing in and out through clenched teeth, his body a wreck, muscles exhausted and sluggish as if he’d run a marathon, he blocked the other demon’s strike, hardened his mental shields—and focused on the one thing that kept him going beyond what he thought he was capable of.
Merle.
Rhun unleashed the full power of his wrath unto the bastard, and—fuelled by the raw need to annihilate the male who’d laid a hand on his mate—he beat, struck, broke and tore into his adversary with brutal force, with a primal, terrible ferocity.
Dodging a blow, he hauled the demon against the wall, breaking his spine. A well-aimed strike with his powers finally hit home, paralyzed the other male, and Rhun tossed him to the floor. He jumped on top of him—and began a merciless butchery.
By the time he ripped the demon’s heart from his chest, there wasn’t a single unbroken bone in the male’s body, not enough blood to squirt from the still beating heart, no tongue left in his mouth, the skin flayed off his hands.
Rhun stood above the battered shape of the demon, panting, drenched in blood—the demon’s, his victims’, as well as Rhun’s. He stared at the carnage at his feet, squashed the heart in his hand, and dropped it on top of the other body parts.
His pulse hammered in his head, rushing waves of pain through his veins. Mind numb in the aftermath of a fight that had turned him into a raging mess of base instincts, he stood still for a moment. Darkness bucked within him. He’d unleashed his nature, had given it free reign, and it had almost consumed him.
Turning, Rhun looked for the one reason that had kept him sane.
Merle sat huddled in a corner, her legs pulled up tight to her front, her arms slung around her knees. She stared at him, unblinking, her face blank.
Rhun stumbled to her, dropped down in front of the woman he loved—who’d watched him tear apart another being with unspeakable violence.
“Merle…” His voice was barely more than a croak. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he hadn’t meant for her to see him like this, hadn’t wanted her to witness such slaughter at his hands. He wanted to touch her, reassure her, but he didn’t dare brush her with a single finger, not when every inch of his skin dripped with blood and gore.
Trembling, he shook his head, knowing he’d broken something inside her he could never fix. He opened his mouth to speak—
Merle’s hand shot out, grabbed his. Her fingers curled around his blood-slick palm. Her eyes locked onto his. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Rhun’s breath caught in his throat. His heart stopped.
“Thank you,” Merle said again, squeezing his hand, the hand that had torn out the demon’s heart. “You made the bastard suffer.” Her gaze held no fear, no revulsion, no shock. Only grim gratefulness, a deep, dark appreciation.
She’d seen him at his worst, and it hadn’t made her hate him.
He was about to tell her how much her acceptance meant to him, but at that very moment, a blow of magic yanked him off her, hauling him across the room. He slammed into the opposite wall. Pain burst inside him in an explosion of nerves, and he slumped down on the bloody floor. Merle’s anguished scream shook the air.
Groaning, Rhun looked up at the witch who’d struck him.
Isabel Murray’s face was the last thing he saw before his mind drowned in darkness.
Chapter 22
“No!” Merle struggled to her feet, slipped in the blood on the floor. Her mind reeling, heart pounding, she stared at Isabel.
The Elder witch stood above Rhun’s broken body, gazing down on him.
“Don’t!” Merle yelled again. “He didn’t hurt me!”
“I know.” Said with such calm, it froze Merle where she stood. “I was hoping he might, though.” Isabel’s eyes darkened with a note of sadness. “Then I wouldn’t have to do this.”
As if cut like puppet strings, Merle’s muscles and sinews didn’t hold her up anymore, and she crumbled to the floor, crashing down on the bloodied concrete with a wet-sounding thud. Pain jolted through her hips, her shoulders, her head as they hit the ground hard. Up close, the metallic smell of all the blood in the room assaulted her nose, and she had to swallow down the bile rising in her throat.
Groaning in agony, she glanced up at Isabel, at the witch who’d once rocked her in comfort after Merle had squeezed her finger in a door as a child, who used to make her and the Murra
y children pancakes on the weekends after they’d had a slumber party. The witch who’d laughed and chatted with Merle’s grandmother while Merle and Maeve had sat under the table, stealing cookies from the plates until the two Elder witches had “punished” them with hugs and kisses and heartfelt words of affection.
The witch who now stood in a room drenched in pain and death, seemingly unaffected by the carnage she’d caused. Flicking a drop of blood off her pristine clothing, she met Merle’s gaze.
Betrayal cut a gorge of raw pain through Merle’s soul. Tears prickled in her eyes. “You,” she whispered. “All this time. It was you.”
Isabel heaved a sigh that seemed to shake the air. “Yes.” Something akin to relief eased her features, as if she was glad she could speak about it freely. “I never meant for you to get involved, Merle. You should have stayed away, should have let it go. But you had to be so persistent, and just kept on digging.” Isabel shook her head, her eyes shining with—pity? “You know I can’t let you leave now. I’ve always loved you, Merle. Rowan did a great job of raising you by herself, and if the circumstances were different, I’d have gladly helped you grow into your powers now that she’s gone. You would have made a formidable Elder, honey.” A sheen of tears glistened on the witch’s eyes. “Emily would have been so proud to see her daughter grow up to be you.”
Merle’s throat closed up, and her chest ached with a pain eclipsing the hurt where she’d crashed to the floor.
“However,” Isabel went on, blinking away the tears and affection in her eyes, “you leave me no other choice now.”
Magical vises tightened around Merle, squeezing her throat, her chest, her lungs, until pain pulsed in every cell of her body. The room swam before her eyes, darkness bleeding into her vision.
“Juneau won’t question me if I tell her your demon went down the deep end and took you with him.” Isabel’s face was a blur of shadows.
Pain beyond the one wrecking her body jolted through Merle, ripping through her heart with cold, piercing fear—for Rhun. “Please don’t kill him,” she croaked past the strangulation in her throat.
“Oh, I won’t,” Isabel said. “I’ll make good use of him—he can finish what his fellow demon didn’t manage to accomplish. Turns out it’s not the demon who takes the powers, but the witch who gives them. You didn’t know that, did you? Neither did I. It’s something I’ve learned over the past few days. Apparently it depends on the witch’s mindset for it to work.” A sigh. “Maeve has been…resistant, and sadly so. It would have all been easier on her if she’d just given in. Maybe she will be more inclined toward your demon. After all, he did successfully ensnare you to relinquish your powers, so chances are good Maeve will give in to him, too.”
At that, Merle’s dying senses snapped back to life, incited by burning fury. Blinking against the encroaching darkness, she focused all her remaining strength on the Elder witch. “How can you be so selfish?” she pressed out through gritted teeth.
Isabel sucked in air. “Selfish?”
The grip of death on Merle eased. The vises loosened by a fraction, giving her time to breathe, to recover enough to verbally charge forward. The least she could do was throw Isabel’s hypocrisy in her face once more. “How can you do this? You, of all people—when you lost your own daughters to torture and murder? How can you betray and torture one of your own like this? And for what? Just to gain more power?”
The Elder witch’s eyes widened. The air stood still.
Merle didn’t back down. She’d verbally bitch-slap Isabel five ways ’til Sunday, and if it was the last thing she did. Which it very likely would be.
“Look at what you did!” Merle yelled. “Not enough that you tortured Maeve for your own gains. Look at this room—it’s a fucking slaughterhouse, and you let it happen! Are you that far gone? Are you that power-hungry?”
The shocked expression on Isabel’s face contorted into a grimace of outrage. “You think I’m doing this for myself?”
That struck Merle dumb, slowing her momentum.
Isabel’s eyes darkened with indignation, laced with a deep hurt. “If I had done this years ago, right after Rowan died, my daughters would still be alive.” Her jaw set in a tight line, she looked down at Merle with steely determination. “Now I’ll make sure their deaths will be avenged—and that no other parent will ever have to mourn a child slain by demons’ hands again.”
Merle’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”
There was an eerie glint in Isabel’s eyes, a mixture of grief, regret—and a touch of madness. “I guess by now you figured out that Maeve contains incredibly strong magic. When Rowan confided in me after she locked it inside her, she told me she’d never felt anything like it. It eclipsed her own, and that was when Maeve was just a child. Now…her powers could be stronger even than Juneau’s—and so much more destructive. You see, channeled in the right way, this kind of magic can annihilate whole species.” A scary smile snuck onto Isabel’s lips—scary because it was clearly on the wrong side of insanity. “Just imagine, Merle,” she whispered with glee, “to live in a world without demons.”
The breath rushed out of Merle. All feeling that was left in her body died away as she stared at the Elder witch in absolute horror. “You’re building that world on dead bodies, Isabel.”
Isabel’s face softened, her lips trembled, and, for a moment, it was Lily’s aunt who looked upon her, with eyes that held power, yes, but also love, such love and warmth. It was the woman who had held Maeve when she’d cried at Rowan’s funeral. Had kissed Merle goodnight more times than she could count. Genuine regret edged her features, and she took a deep breath. Then, the moment was gone, and Isabel’s expression iced over. “Nothing great has ever been achieved without making sacrifices.”
Merle swallowed hard, feeling her time run out. “The other Elders won’t tolerate this madness.” Her heart raced away along with what remained of her life. “You won’t be getting away with this.”
“Once they see the benefit of the end result, they will thank me for it.”
Her brain running in overdrive to find a way out of this, Merle glanced around the room. If only she had her powers, she’d have a fighting chance to take on Isabel. Her gaze fell on Rhun, still slumped down on the floor, motionless. It pierced her heart to see him like this, bloodied, bruised and broken. He hadn’t stirred since Isabel had struck him down, he was still alive, Merle felt it in her very bones. Maybe, if he regained consciousness… She willed him to move with every ounce of her diminished mental strength.
Wake up, Rhun. Please wake up.
He stirred. Merle’s heart stopped, then started a hysterical gallop. She turned her attention back to Isabel. The Elder witch hadn’t noticed his movement. Relief flooded Merle.
Grasping for straws, she ventured forward. “This doesn’t make sense, Isabel. How would you even get the powers from the demon once he’s taken them from Maeve? He can’t do anything with them and you can’t either as long as the magic is locked inside him.” Holding her breath, she tried to hide her anxiety. Would Isabel take the bait? Would she deem herself safe and close enough to victory to divulge the information?
“Oh, don’t worry. The powers can be passed to another witch.”
So close, so damn close. “How?”
Merle fought hard to keep her breathing calm, to avoid looking at Rhun, who’d shifted by the slightest fraction. Isabel stood between them, her attention on Merle. She still hadn’t noticed Rhun had come to.
“Please tell me you won’t have to take blood, pain, and pleasure from Rhun to get Maeve’s powers.” Merle looked at Isabel with an extra note of pleading in her eyes.
“Heavens, no.” Isabel seemed genuinely disgusted by that idea. “Just the thought of laying a hand on a demon…” She shivered with obvious revulsion, then her eyes hardened. “It will be painful for him, though.” Tilting her head, she regarded Merle for a moment, a slow smile spreading on her face.
“What—what will you
do to him?” Merle didn’t have to act one bit to put the tremor of fear in her voice.
“Oh,” Isabel said with way too much delight, “he just needs to bleed himself dry with the intent to pass the magic to me, which I will make sure he does. And it will be my pleasure to persuade him to do so.”
Behind Isabel, Rhun silently brought his wrist up to his mouth, his movements sluggish, exhausted. Using his fangs, he sliced his vein open until blood gushed forth. He repeated the action with his other wrist and then made sure the wounds stayed open. All without making a single sound.
Merle’s breath caught in her throat. “Rhun, no.”
There was no answer from him. Her heart broke into fine, fine splinters piercing her soul. She closed her eyes for a moment then looked back at Isabel. All she knew, right then, was that she had to stall, or else Rhun would drain himself for nothing.
“Isabel,” she said, “you don’t have to do this. Just…let Maeve go when it’s over. Scrub her memory and let her go. She’s been through so much…”
The blood kept flowing from Rhun’s veins, mingling with the blood on the floor. His chest barely moved with his breaths anymore.
Isabel’s expression was harsh, shuttered. And still a shadow of regret so deep passed over her face, revealing a heart inside her madness. “She has been through so much,” she whispered, “that killing her would be a mercy, honey.”
“No,” Merle rasped, torn beyond the grasp of understanding.
“I’m sorry.” Real pain trembled in Isabel’s voice.
Merle knew the precise moment Rhun’s heart stopped beating. It was the same moment her magic slammed back into her body, fused with her mind, her soul. Power rushed through her veins and beat against her skin with maddening euphoria. She gasped, flattened on her back by the force of it.